Posts from Grilling

We moved on from bottled salad dressing in my house to our own homemade versions years ago, but for some reason, BBQ sauce still came from the store. And there's no reason for that when it's so easy to make it from scratch. Here's the sweet, tangy, smoky sauce I've worked on and tweaked over the past few months. I'm finally happy enough with it to make it worth sharing!

It turns out the easiest part of making a whole fish is prepping and roasting it. The tricky part is finding a fish that doesn't come with a whole lot of environmental baggage. It seems like the lists and apps telling us which fish to buy and which fish to snub are always shifting.

At the moment, there's one type of fish that is fairly easy to find, moderately affordable, and won't do too much damage to your karma: Branzino. This is the fish I used this week when we fired up the grill to kick off Memorial Day weekend.

Finally, after a long winter, you can uncover the grill and get to cooking outside now. (Yes, yes, I know that some of you lucky — or diehard — cooks grill straight through the winter. But it never hurts to give the grill a spring cleaning.)

Here's a quick checklist of things you should run through before you light the first fire of the year!

I've been in Los Angeles for a week and we've already grilled artichokes three times. While the earth in my neck of the woods back east still snores through its winter slumber, agriculture is full-on here. Given the warm weather, we decided to grill as much as possible so we've been finishing off the 'chokes on the grill. It lends a nice crispy texture to the edges (think potato chip!) and a smoky flavor that you just can't get out of a pot of boiling water.

I realize this post has limited use. It's unlikely that you are given venison on a regular basis, even more unlikely that you have choices as to how it's prepared. But what is it they say? Never look a gift deer in the mouth! Or something like that. If you do have a choice, ask for your ground venison with no fat added. It's easy to do it yourself, and you'll know exactly where the fat came from.

Quickly-cooking chicken breasts and pork chops are great for weeknight meals — except when they turn out as dry and flavorless as shoe leather. Brining has become my saving grace! It's a way of ensuring juiciness and adding flavor, and unlike turkey and corned beef that need to soak for days, these thin cuts will brine in about the time it takes you to make a side salad.

Q: My wife and I will be undertaking some major renovations of our kitchen in about a month, and will not have access all the time to our stove, and most if not all of our cookware and dishes will have to be packed up. We will however have access to our fridge, our grill, and our yard, and I'm looking for creative suggestions on how to best take advantage of this.

In my future dream house, there is a grill on the deck right outside the kitchen and it is easy to carry ingredients and grilled food in and out of the house. (According to my husband, there will also be a rollaway dance floor, but that's a post for another day and another site.) In my real-life apartment, I wheel the grill onto the concrete parking area next to the trash bins, right outside the boarded-up, nonfunctional door to my kitchen.

Using a sheet pan to carry and hold my to-be-grilled and freshly-grilled food is not just handy; it's downright essential.

For the final note on my Backyard S'mores Party, this month's Gathering from The Kitchn, I wanted to bring you a quick look at Rome Industries, a small American company based in Illinois who makes many of the marshmallow forks, hot dog roasters, and S'mores makers in use around campfires all over the country this summer. I asked Michael O'Russa, their president, how they got started and he shared this sweet story about his dad...